Research Expertise and Interest
politics and law, Congress
Research Description
Jonathan Gould is the Class of 1965 Professor of Law at UC Berkeley. His research focuses on the relationship between politics and law, with special attention to Congress and the legislative process. In exploring these topics, he draws on a variety of methods and literatures, including from public law, political theory, and political science.
Gould’s scholarship has been published or is forthcoming in the flagship law reviews at Harvard, Yale, N.Y.U., Virginia, Chicago, Michigan, Georgetown, and Vanderbilt, as well as various specialty and peer-review journals.
Gould’s scholarship includes the following:
- Constitutional law and theory: Puzzles of Progressive Constitutionalism(opens in a new tab) (2022), Structural Biases in Structural Constitutional Law(opens in a new tab) (2022, w/D. Pozen), Codifying Constitutional Norms(opens in a new tab) (2021), and Workarounds in American Public Law(opens in a new tab) (forthcoming 2025, w/D. Farber & M. Stephenson).
- Congress and legislative procedure: Law Within Congress(opens in a new tab) (2020), The Law of Legislative Representation(opens in a new tab) (2021); Democratizing the Senate from Within(opens in a new tab) (2022, w/K. Shepsle & M. Stephenson); A Republic of Spending (forthcoming 2024), and The Senate’s Shadow Doctrine(opens in a new tab) (2024).
- Administrative law: The Politics of Deference(opens in a new tab) (2022, w/G. Elinson), and Cost-Benefit Analysis in Polarized Times(opens in a new tab) (2023)
In Gould’s first year at Berkeley, his article Law Within Congress won the Association of American Law Schools’ Scholarly Papers Prize for best work by a faculty member in their first five years of teaching.
Gould received his J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School, where he served as President of the Harvard Law Review, and his Ph.D. from Harvard’s Department of Government. Gould has served as a visiting professor at Harvard Law School and NYU School of Law.